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Games Workshop proportions are horribly out of true which is why so many truescale models looks weird, they exaggerate the already deformed Games Workshop models and highlight the problems they have.

The scale of the models is all over the shop with the Death Cultist models being some of the more accurate Games Workshop models, and compare them to a regular figure and they are tiny. At 28mm scale, your average human should stand 28mm high (some do take this to the eye level only but it is better to have it to head height and you see this with many 32mm scale miniatures (which, whilst much taller than a Games Workshop figure have far thinner limbs, and bodies, smaller heads et cetera) and this would represent an average 5'9" human. If we were to say a Space Marine was 7' precisely that would require a model 34mm tall.

If you were to make a scale miniature of an 8' Space Marine, a not unreasonable size based on the background, then the model would be 38mm tall, considerably bigger than your average human character.

Mostly you will find that human and Space Marine models are 30mm tall. Eldar models suffer by being too short, Tau too tall and only orks, who stand about 6' are accurately portrayed.

You can see the problem with human figures with this image:



This is an unarmoured and armoured Space Marine I made a long while ago at 54mm scale. You can see how the Marine looks (a smidge under 7' tall the model is 66mm where Artemis is, according to Jes Goodwin, supposedly 67mm tall, downscaled from a 7' 6" drawing) next to a regular human and then how Games Workshop's heroically scaled 54mm Marine looks in comparison.




I don't say my own models are perfect by any stretch but they are fairly accurate scale figures, not heroic, and I think they do serve to show how Games Workshop figures differ enormously from what would be an accurate scale miniature. But then they don't make scale miniatures they make wargames models and making a space marine bigger is a lot easier than making a guardsman smaller.

I don't disagree, the heroic style is just that and ordinarily I don't think it's a problem at all and the minis are what they are, although, even when I was only 9 or so I always thought Marines were too small. Ultimately, those 'truescale' models that work the best , find a way to make a bigger heroic scale model, rather than a to-scale model.

For instance, these are what a properly to-scale Space Marine would look like, with accurate, human normal proportions (you can see these in the artwork occasionally).



And some artwork along the same lines:



Despite being highly accurate they look very strange but, super tall humans do look kinda strange.



Unlike a more heroic 'truescale' which looks less weird because it conforms more closely to the Games Workshop style.

 Gantoris wrote:
you would expect an Eldar or an Ork to be similar height to a marine.

Since you say you've been reading the source material a lot lately I would expect you to know better than this.

Eldar are physically similar to humans, although not entirely identical by any means. They have long, elegant limbs and fine ascetic features...

Codex Imperialis, pg 62

A typical Ork stands around the same height as a man.

Codex Orks, pg 6

Then you have this image (although I note your disregard for the artwork) of a Tau, human and space marine.

 Gantoris wrote:


...supposed to be a bit taller...

A bit taller is not 7-8 feet

the warriors represented by minis would be bigger than average human height.

It is well established that the average ork [boy] stands roughly the same height as a man and as such, the average ork model should be the same height as a man not 7-8 feet. The metal boss model I have in front of me stands 39mm or 8 feet tall and yet a space marine model stands no more than 32mm or 6 feet 6 inches a clear discrepancy; even more so with a Rogue Trader space marine who stands a mere 27mm high.

The stock miniatures are a very poor metric by which to judge the relative sizes of the things they represent as clearly they don't do that job very well. Even disregarding all the source material beyond 'space marines are giants compared to ordinary humans' the models fail to accurately portray this. Since shrinking a model is very difficult then adding height to a space marine model is a legitimate attempt to make a space marine look how he should look, which is much taller than a regular human model; and also in keeping with the established idea of regular elder and orks also being approximately the same size as a regular man.

Same here, I've played the game for over twenty years and it was the Ultramarine Dreadnought in White 203 that made me a firm 40K fanatic after playing Lizardmen initially although my very first Citadel Miniatures were some pre-slotta dwarfs.

When a were a 'wee lad' the space marine models were always too small even though they were what drew me to 40K in the first place! Making them bigger is not 'mutilation', 'madness', 'insanity', 'futile' or denying the 'proper' look.